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Where Success Comes From – Part Two

Very successful people are not necessary different than less successful people, they just do different things.

Success comes from doing.

I could just leave it at that and this post, while very short, would still be pretty good. But it’s really not as simple as just doing something to succeed. In order to succeed you must do the right somethings and you need to do them at the right time.

Doing something may make you busy but being busy doesn’t make you successful. Doing the right something makes you productive and being productive is very likely to lead to success.

So what are those right “somethings” that successful people do? I shared 6 of these “somethings” in part one of this post, the final six are highlighted now in part two. I found the graphic that accompanies these two posts online and I’d give credit to the person who created it but I still have no idea where it originated. While I didn’t create it and despite a few grammatical errors, I think the 12 “somethings” are absolutely spot on.

So here are the 6 more “somethings” that successful people do…

Successful people keep life simple. They seldom make anything harder than it needs to be. When communicating they don’t count their words, they weigh them. If four words will convey their message then they don’t say five. If a goal can be reached in 7 steps their plan won’t have eight. They don’t worry about things that happened in the past and they don’t borrow worry from things that might not ever happen. They have a strong focus on what they are doing right now.

Successful people focus on continuous improvement. Instead of looking for a way to improve something 100% they look for ways to improve 100 things 1%. They make those improvements every single day and they are never satisfied with “good enough.”

Successful people know how they are doing. They track and measure their progress, usually on a daily basis. They know which actions produce the greatest results and they know which activities cause waste. They know when they are getting better and they know almost the very moment they fall into a rut. They use their goals to get themselves back on track towards success.

Successful people know that their attitude is their choice. They also know that every area of their life is easier if the CHOOSE a positive attitude. Successful people do get down, they just pull themselves back up more quickly than less successful people. They accept their mistakes as an opportunity to learn and then they move forward.

Successful people invest their time with people who can help them succeed. They stay away from the nattering nabobs of negativism. The most successful people have a mentor or a coach who cares about them enough to be honest with them about their performance in all areas of their life. Successful people embrace people with opinions that are different than their own because they understand that they can’t learn as much from people who already think just like they do.

Successful people have balance in their lives. They understand that sacrificing their personal life for business success is something less than full success. They understand that when success comes at the expense of other people it is success that is probably not worth having. They also know that the best way to increase their success is to share it with others. Truly successful people are successful in all areas of their life.

If you’re like me you’ve likely seen at least one of the twelve “somethings” that you need to work on. I hope you do because success for you is unlikely unless YOU make it happen!